Seen and Heard: web extra

Published: Winter 2004–05

Summer-long voting at the official Notre Dame athletics website, www.und.com, yielded a 25-player All-Century Basketball Team to commemorate the men’s program’s 100th season. One of the most striking details about the players elected is how much less scoring there used to be. The legendary Moose Krause led the Irish in 1931-32 with an average of 7.7 points per game. The only current player to make the All-Century team was point guard Chris Thomas. . . . As was the case last year, the 3,000 seats available to students for this year’s men’s games sold out in less than three hours. . . . The latest student- athlete graduate rate report from the NCAA ranks Notre Dame second among Division I-A (major football power) schools with a four-year average of 87 percent. Notre Dame tied for second with Northwestern and Stanford. Duke was No. 1 at 90 percent. The national average was 61 percent. . . . New government restrictions on travel to Cuba forced Father Robert Pelton, CSC, to cancel the trip his From Power to Communion theology class has taken to the communist island nation during spring break the past two years. . . . A column in The Observer at the beginning of the year by Kristin Shrader-Frechette, O’Neill Family Professor of Philosophy and professor of biological sciences, contained frightening information about South Bend’s air quality. She wrote that pollution data reported to the EPA by industry shows that Saint Joseph County’s cancer risk from air releases of known carcinogens makes its air dirtier than 90 percent of all counties in the United States and that South Bend residents face a cancer risk 100 times higher than that mandated by the U.S. Clean Air Act. She then presented evidence that she says suggests the situation is actually worse than even those figures indicate. . . . Freshman Angela Maxey and her father, Jon, cofounder of a humanitarian aid organization called Bright Light Inc., say they want to launch a large, inflatable sphere into orbit around the Earth. The International Peace Star, as they call it, would serve as “a constant reminder of the beauty that surrounds us and the importance of peace to our future.” More information is available at www.thepeacestar.org. . . . The Princeton Review and Forbes.com rate Notre Dame as the nation’s second-most entrepreneurially minded university behind only the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. The website said the 25 schools it identified were the best at teaching undergraduates how to start their own businesses and supported them with everything from mentoring to venture funds. . . . A fashion trend among students this year is to “pop” one’s collar, meaning stand it up. Some deride the practice as imitative of East Coast preppies. . . . Some members of the marching band were unhappy that the band traveled to only one away game, Tennessee, during the regular season instead of the usual two. Director Ken Dye explained that because it is so expensive for the 360-member band to travel, the group usually chooses to go to two games close enough for a single-day roundtrip. This year it was decided that a two-day trip to Knoxville was more worthwhile than going to two closer games. The band got a bonus when the Irish accepted a bid to the postseason Insight Bowl and the University paid to have the band come along. . . . Huddle Video opened in LaFortune this fall offering DVD rentals for a pricey $2.99 a night. . . . . . . Bruno’s Pizza offered students free roundtrip transportation from campus to its Prairie Avenue location on the city’s southwest side Thursday nights to take advantage of the restaurant’s $6.95 all-you-can-eat buffet. . . . Before the Purdue game, a 68-year-old fan, James D. Beaty Sr. of Saint Joseph, Michigan, and Boca Raton, Florida, collapsed and died of a heat attack in the Pendle lot north of campus. He was said to have had a history of heart problems. . . . Harry Jenkins, father of Father John Jenkins, CSC, ‘76, ’78M.A., Notre Dame’s president-elect, passed away in September after being in declining health for several years. He was 75. John Jenkins was the third of Harry and Helen Jenkins’ 12 children, all of whom survive along with Mrs. Jenkins. . . . Philosophy professor Philip Quinn, a member of the faculty since 1985, died in November following a long illness. He was remembered by colleagues a “sweet guy.” He was the author of more than 100 articles and reviews in philosophical journals and anthologies. He also wrote two books, Divine Commands and Moral Requirements and The Philosophical Challenges of Religious Diversity, and co-edited a third.. . . . There are now two alternative student newspapers on campus: the conservative Irish Rover, now in its second year and published roughly twice a month, and the new Advocata Nostra, described as a newsletter of Catholic orthodoxy. The latter hopes to publish monthly. . . . Students often bemoan the state of gender relations on campus and usually blame it on single-sex dorms. At the new Gender Relations Center, which opened last fall in the LaFortune Student Center, students can “explore,” among other things, how to cultivate “healthy friendships and dating relationships,” according to the head of Student Affairs, Father Mark Poorman, CSC, ‘80M.Div. . . . The back of this year’s Lewis Hall (“Chicks”) T-shirt consisted of a list in the tradition of MasterCard’s “priceless” commercials. Understanding the references required some help, provide here in parentheses. The shirt read: “Lakeside view: $650,000 (imagined cost of waterfront property, somewhere; Lewis is near Saint Joseph’s Lake); Kitchens on every floor: $75,010 (imagined cost of four kitchens plus $10 for cookie dough); Working elevator: $40,000; Walks to DeBartolo: $80 (estimated cost of a class skipped in the large classroom building that some residents consider to be a long trek); Being a Chick: Priceless.” . . . In an Inside Column in The Observer, Assistant Scene Editor Christie Bolsen confessed that she is such a nerd that she carries a travel-size stapler in her backpack “for emergency in-class paper stapling.” . . . In a Scholastic Magazine humor column, junior Erik Powers described his plan to avoid getting a job after college by instead becoming a “trophy husband.” Step one was to transfer to Saint Mary’s, where, as he put it—begging feminist rebuke—he would be able to “learn about being a trophy spouse from the girls who do it best.” The women of Saint Mary’s, he wrote, could teach him how to “spot future cardiologists, corporate lawyers and stockbrokers.” . . . Asked to comment on the dazzling academic credentials of the latest freshman class, admissions director Dan Saracino told_ The Observer,_ “If you brag too much about the class, it’s like a hospital bragging about the health of the patients coming in. The mark of the school is what they’ve done when they leave.” . . . Relations continue to be rocky between students living in rental houses off-campus and the permanent residents of the neighborhoods. The complaints usually concern students’ large, loud, late-night parties. One resident told the_ South Bend Tribune_ he’d seen students urinating in his yard and having sex outdoors in plain view. A South Bend city council member organized several forums last fall for students, residents, police and city officials at which they could air grievances and try to resolve conflicts. . . . A couple of Notre Dame students abroad in London were assaulted in the lobby of their flat last fall, but neither was seriously hurt. The incident took place after midnight, according to one of the students involved. He gave this account: Two Englishmen in their 20s were standing outside a pub across the street from the flat, apparently drunk. They began yelling over to the three Notre Dame students who had just come outside. The students retreated inside. The men came over and began banging on the door. A female student, unaware of the situation, let them in. The men came in yelling and swinging fists. One student was cut when he was hit in the head with a thrown telephone receiver. The men swore and spat and referred to the students insultingly as foreigners. The student witness said the ruckus may have been sparked by another student overhearing a loud conversation outside the pub earlier in the evening and making a comment to his friends that was overheard by those at the pub. Last spring a group of students abroad in Fremantle, Western Australia, were taunted by drunken off-duty police officers because of their nationality and the assailants’ displeasure over the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. The London student said he didn’t think the war or their nationality played a major role in this incident. . . . Here’s another reason to purchase football tickets through legitimate channels: According to an account in the _South Bend Tribune, _ a South Bend man posted a message on the fan site ndnation.com saying he was looking to buy six tickets to the home game against Pittsburgh. A stranger e-mailed back saying his dead father had been a Notre Dame professor and he had eight tickets near the 50-yard line. After the two talked on the phone, the first man wired $360 to the seller via Western Union. Needless to say, the six tickets never arrived. The phone number the seller gave him wouldn’t receive incoming calls and appeared to be a pay phone. Notre Dame has no affiliation with ndnation.com. . . . The talk of campus at the start of fall semester was the federal government’s decision to revoke the visa of a famous Muslim scholar hired to teach in the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies. Most of the letters to The _Observer_’s Viewpoint page said they wanted Tariq Ramadan, named by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world, to be allowed into the country to teach. Some Jewish groups are suspicious of Ramadan, saying he may have ties to Muslim extremists. But members of the Law School’s new Jewish Law Students Society wrote a letter to newspapers supporting Ramadan’s hiring and condemning the government’s action. . . . In addition to the Jewish law students’ group, also new to campus this year is the Jewish Club of Notre Dame. President Leah McKelvey ‘05, whose mother is Jewish and father Catholic, says the purpose of the club is to “celebrate diversity and acceptance within the Notre Dame community and beyond by learning together through discussion and events.” The club has about 20 dues-paying members, she says. . . . Young children living on South Bend’s mostly poor, minority-heavy west side wanted the Irish football team and its coach, Ty Willingham, to feel better after the team’s last-second loss Pittsburgh, and they expressed their feelings to one of the South Bend Tribune‘s columnists. Nine-year-old Traveon Johnson told columnist May Lee Johnson that he wanted the players to know they had played well. “I think you are one of the best teams in the world, and you have a great coach who is black,” he was quoted as saying. "I’d never seen a black coach until Tyrone Willingham came. Now I see one all the time when I watch the game. That makes me and my friends feel really good." Willingham was fired after the team’s regular-season finale, a 31-point loss to Southern Cal. . . A van carrying the men’s golf team to a practice in Michigan in mid-September was sideswiped by a semi when the van’s driver, a freshman on the team, tried to make an illegal U-turn on the Indiana Toll Road. The accident would have been worse if the truck driver hadn’t taken evasive action to avoid plowing into the back of the van, which was decelerating quickly to make the turn from the speed lane. No one was seriously injured. Students who hold drivers licenses are allowed to drive University vehicles after they have completed a training course. . . . Student government is trying to create a SafeBus service that would provide students cheap bus service from downtown back to campus and nearby apartment complexes in the early morning hours on weekends. . . . With the nationwide shortage of flu vaccine and strict guidelines issued by the federal government for whom should receive the doses, the University couldn’t offer free vaccines to all employees and students this year, as in years past. Health Services was authorized to administer the vaccine only to people who met the criteria for being at higher risk. However, because the University ordred and received its supply of the vaccine before the restrictions were announced, Health Services ended up with almost twice as many doses as it could use. The University decided to donate the surplus—nearly a thousand doses—to a local community group, Healthy Communities Initiative, which helps provide health care to people with no ability to pay for it. . . . Athletic Director Kevin White was appointed president of the Division I-A Athletic Directors Association for 2004-05. . . . Anne “Sandy” Barbour, deputy director of athletics under White the past two years, was named the first female athletic director at the University of California-Berkeley.